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By Ken Coupland
January 2002
Blur <www.blur.com>
This Venice, California-based digital-animation studio specializing
in high-visibility projects--blockbuster trailers, simulator attractions,
and the like--posts a beguiling self-promotion distinguished by a fresh
look, a sophisticated palette, and ingenious navigation. Many of its commissions
cater to short attention spans, so Blur's portfolio is perfectly suited
to the Web. Click on staff members' silhouettes to go to QuickTime movies:
a promo for Xbox (Microsoft's new game platform), the studio's assaultive
yet stylish titles for the Learning Channel's robot competition programming,
and "Doll People," a charming prototype for a TV cartoon series
that avoids the visual clichés of most computer-generated animation.
Abandoned Places <http://home2.planetinternet.be/henk/index.html>
The work of a Belgian airline pilot who for the past several years has documented
his "infiltrations" of derelict factories, hospitals, and
other institutional buildings in Europe, this photo gallery radiates an
eerie charm. Photographer Henk van Rensbergen's solitary outings are duly
recorded in remarkably evocative black-and-white images, fleshed out
with written musings on the dank, devastated surroundings. "I rarely
take friends with me to 'show them around,'" van Rensbergen writes.
"Mainly because it is too dangerous and also because you can only capture
the real atmosphere of the place being on your own, undistracted, in a silent
conversation."
360 Degrees <www.360degrees.org>
Sporting an expertly detailed interface, this not-for-profit work in
progress addresses a pressing national concern: the appalling incarceration
rates that are crippling the U.S. criminal justice system. Creative director
Alison Cornyn and photographer Sue Johnson--principals in Picture Projects,
a New York City-based new-media documentary company--have crafted vivid
portraits of conditions within prison walls that are at once heartfelt and
incisive. The site's urgent message is bolstered by spoken first-person
narratives, photography, and full-circle video pans of prison cells (thus
the title), including one panorama that starkly conveys the chilling banality
of death row.
Design Nation <www.designnation.co.uk>
A juried showcase that introduces the crème de la crème of
British design to an international audience, this huge directory provides
a spiffy setting for the work of nearly 100 well-known names, along with
recent graduates of the country's prestigious design schools. The fulsomely
illustrated and exhaustively cross-referenced site is organized by product
category: furniture, interior/exterior design, ceramics and glass, jewelry,
and textiles and fashion accessories. The developers have focused on professional
users--manufacturers, retailers, architects, and specifiers--but there's
plenty here for the casual visitor as well. A sister site
(www.thedesigntrust.co.uk)
includes a Business Start-Up Guide and a newsletter useful to designers
and students.
Paleo Ring <http://homepage1.nifty.com/burgess/cmain.html>
Viewing this gallery of extinct Cambrian-era monstrosities is made even
spookier by animations that effectively resurrect them from the dead. The
aptly named Anomalocaris, for example--with its protuberant eyes and creepy
undulating side flaps--vividly advertises its status as an evolutionary
dead end. Rendered by a far-flung team of scientific illustrators,
the dozen or so posted studies are part of an international Web "ring"
of some 240 sites devoted to paleontology, paleoanthropology, prehistoric
archaeology, the evolution of behavior, and evolutionary biology.
Browse our Screen Space archives for even more reviews of Web design and resources.
Ken Coupland can be reached at
screenspace@metropolismag.com.
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